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FreeBSD News Flash

FreeBSD is a rapidly developing operating system. Keeping up on
the latest developments can be a chore! To keep on top of things,
be sure and check this page periodically. Also, you may wish to
subscribe to the
freebsd-announce
mailing list or the RSS feed.

The following projects have their own news pages, which should
be checked for project specific updates.

02 November: The fourth RC build for the FreeBSDÂ 10.1 release cycle
is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386,
ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

02 November: FreeBSD 1.0, the first official production-ready release
of FreeBSD was announced 21 years ago today, on November 2nd, 1993.
See the original announcement here.

October 2014

23 October: The third RC build for the FreeBSDÂ 10.1 release cycle
is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386,
ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

13 October: The second RC build for the FreeBSDÂ 10.1 release cycle
is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386,
ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

4 October: The first RC build for the FreeBSDÂ 10.1 release cycle
is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386,
ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

September 2014

28 September: The third BETA build for the FreeBSDÂ 10.1 release cycle
is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386,
ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

21 September: The second BETA build for the FreeBSDÂ 10.1 release cycle
is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386,
ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

14 September: The first BETA build for the FreeBSDÂ 10.1 release cycle
is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386,
ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

July 2014

31 July: We are pleased to announce the publication of our 2014
Semi-Annual Newsletter! This is a chance for you to read
about what we are doing to help make FreeBSD the best
operating system available.

Read about funded development projects to improve FreeBSD,
sponsored conferences, developer and vendor summits to
create face-to-face opportunities, research, how we are
doing on our fundraising efforts, and so much more!

9 July: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce the completion of
the 2014 Core Team election. The FreeBSD Core Team acts as
the project's "board of directors" and is responsible for
approving new src committers, resolving disputes between
developers, appointing sub-committees for specific
purposes (security officer, release engineering, port
managers, webmaster, etc ...), and making any other
administrative or policy decisions as needed. The Core
Team has been elected by FreeBSD developers every two years
since 2000.

More information about the election (together with a list
of the new members of the Core Team) can be found in the
official announcement.

6 July: The third RC build for the FreeBSD-9.3 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

4 July: For people needing WITH_NEW_XORG, an alternate pkg(8)
repository is now online. It contains a subset of
packages affected by this knob. Please see the announce
mail for more details.

June 2014

28 June: The second RC build for the FreeBSD-9.3 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

21 June: The first RC build for the FreeBSD-9.3 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

14 June: The third BETA build for the FreeBSD-9.3 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

7 June: The second BETA build for the FreeBSD-9.3 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

1 June: The first BETA build for the FreeBSD-9.3 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

April 2014

March 2014

11 March: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce its
participation in Google's 2014 Summer of Code program,
which funds summer students to participate in open source
projects. This will be the FreeBSD Project's tenth year
in the program, having mentored over 160 successful
students through summer-long coding projects between 2005
and 2013.

Past successful projects have included improvements to
Linux ABI emulation, NFSv4 ACLs, TCP regression testing,
FUSE file system support, and countless other projects.
Many students go on to become FreeBSD developers, as well
as participating in FreeBSD developer events around the
world through continuing support from the FreeBSD
Foundation.

Prospective participants are invited to apply; more
information is available, including proposal and deadline
information, on the FreeBSD
Summer Projects page.

February 2014

10 February: We are pleased to announce the availability of the
FreeBSDÂ Journal! It is the new online Journal, that the
FreeBSDÂ Foundation is publishing, that is all about
FreeBSD. Click here
to find out how to get the first issue that is focused on
FreeBSDÂ 10.

9 January: The fifth RC build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

2 January: The fourth RC build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

December 2013

26 December: The third RC build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

16 December: The second RC build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

9 December: The first RC build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

3 December: The fourth BETA build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

November 2013

5 November: The third BETA build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

October 2013

30 October: Official binary packages are now available for Pkg for
FreeBSD 8.3, 8.4, 9.1, 9.2, 10.0 and head. See the announcement
for more information.

28 October: The second BETA build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

14 October: The first BETA build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

7 October: The fifth ALPHA build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

29 September: The fourth ALPHA build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

18 September: The second ALPHA build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

13 September: The first ALPHA build for the FreeBSD-10.0 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

12 September: The fourth RC build for the FreeBSD-9.2 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

August 2013

26 August: The third RC build for the FreeBSD-9.2 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

16 August: The second RC build for the FreeBSD-9.2 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

6 August: We are pleased to announce the publication of our 2013
Semi-Annual Newsletter! This is a chance for you to read
about what we are doing to help make FreeBSD the best
operating system available.

Read about funded development projects to improve FreeBSD,
sponsored conferences, developer and vendor summits to
create face-to-face opportunities, research, how we are
doing on our fundraising efforts, and so much more!

5 August: The first RC build for the FreeBSD-9.2 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

July 2013

29 July: The second BETA build for the FreeBSD-9.2 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, powerpc64
and sparc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

22 July: The first BETA build for the FreeBSD-9.2 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386 and ia64
architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

June 2013

19 June: FreeBSD celebrated its 20th
birthday today. On June 19, 1993, Jordan Hubbard,
Rod Grimes, and David Greenman announced to the world the
creation of their new fork of the BSD 4.3 operating
system.

FreeBSD was derived from the 386BSD 0.1 release from Bill
and Lynne Jolitz with its 1.0 release in Nov 1993. Its
stated goals were to create a fast, stable, reliable
server OS for i386 systems.

Since then, it has become the backbone of countless
products and has grown to supporting 64bit computing,
embedded devices, and desktop users.

12 May: The January to March 2013 Status Report is now
available with 31 entries.

9 May: The FreeBSDÂ Foundation is pleased to announce Ed
Maste's new role as the Foundation's part-time Director of
Project Development. Ed has served on the Foundation's
board for two years, and has stepped down in order to
accept this new position.

8 May: The third RC build for the FreeBSD-8.4 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386 and pc98
architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

April 2013

29 April: The FreeBSDÂ Foundation is pleased to announce that
Edward Tomasz Napierała has joined as its second
member of technical staff. This is a continuation of the
Foundation's plan to invest in staff in 2013.

24 April: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce its
participation in Google's 2013 Summer of Code program,
which funds summer students to participate in open source
projects. This will be the FreeBSD Project's ninth year
in the program, having mentored over 150 successful
students through summer-long coding projects between 2005
and 2012.

Past successful projects have included improvements to
Linux ABI emulation, NFSv4 ACLs, TCP regression testing,
FUSE file system support, and countless other projects.
Many students go on to become FreeBSD developers, as well
as participating in FreeBSD developer events around the
world through continuing support from the FreeBSD
Foundation.

Prospective participants are invited to apply; more
information is available, including proposal and deadline
information, on the FreeBSD
Summer Projects page.

22 April: The second RC build for the FreeBSD-8.4 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386 and pc98
architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

March 2013

22 March: The first BETA build for the FreeBSD-8.4 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386 and pc98
architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

14 March: The FreeBSDÂ Foundation is pleased to announce that
Konstantin Belousov has been hired as its first full-time
member of technical staff, a key milestone of the
Foundation's investment in staff for 2013.

13 January: The April-June, 2012 Status Report is now
available with 17 entries.

10 January: The development of FreeBSD ports is done in Subversion
nowadays. By February 28th 2013, the FreeBSD ports tree will
no longer be exported to CVS. Therefore ports tree
updates via CVS, CVSup or csup(1) will no longer be
available after that date. All users who use CVS, CVSup
or csup(1) to update the ports tree are encouraged to
switch to portsnap(8) or for users which need more control
over their ports collection checkout, use Subversion
directly. More information are available in the
announcement mail on the FreeBSDÂ ports
announce mailing list.

8 January: We are excited to share our next story for our Faces of
FreeBSD Series. This is a chance for us to spotlight
different people who contribute to FreeBSD and have received
funding from us to work on development projects, run
conferences, travel to conferences, and advocate for
FreeBSD.

Let us introduce you to Thomas Abthorpe. We helped him
attend BSDCan 2009, 2011, and 2012 by helping with his
travel expenses. Read his story here.

17 December: We are excited to share our next story for our Faces of
FreeBSD Series. This is a chance for us to spotlight
different people who contribute to FreeBSD and have received
funding from us to work on development projects, run
conferences, travel to conferences, and advocate for
FreeBSD.

Let us introduce you to Dan Langille. We helped him by
sponsoring BSDCan since 2006. Read his story here.

12 December: Astute readers of our blog know that The
FreeBSDÂ Foundation's annual year-end fundraising drive
began last week. Every year over 50% of our donations
arrive during this campaign. Read
more...

10 December: Are you aware of the tangible benefits derived from our
support of the FreeBSD community? In conjunction with our
year-end fundraising drive we are going to be spotlighting
different people on our website, blog, and Facebook page
who have received funding to work on development projects,
run conferences, travel to conferences, and advocate for
FreeBSD. Read
more...

5 December: Your donations have helped make FreeBSD the best OS
available! By investing in The FreeBSDÂ Foundation you
have helped us keep FreeBSD a high-performance, secure, and
stable operating system.

Thanks to people like you, the FreeBSDÂ Foundation has
been proudly supporting the FreeBSDÂ Project and
community for 12 years now. Read
more...

5 December: The FreeBSDÂ Project has enabled Google Analytics to
collect anonymised statistics on web site use. More
information can be found in the official announcement.

November 2012

17 November: On Sunday 11th of November, an intrusion was detected on
two machines within the FreeBSD.org cluster. We have
found no evidence of any modifications that would put any
end user at risk. However, we do urge all users to read
the report available at https://www.freebsd.org/news/2012-compromise.html
and decide on any required actions themselves.

3 November: The third RC build for the FreeBSD-9.1 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, sparc64,
and powerpc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

10 October: The second RC build for the FreeBSD-9.1 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64,
powerpc, and powerpc64 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

July 2012

16 July: The first BETA build for the FreeBSD-9.1 release cycle is
now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64,
i386, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

11 July: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce the completion of
the 2012 Core Team election. The FreeBSD Core Team acts as
the project's "board of directors" and is responsible for
approving new src committers, resolving disputes between
developers, appointing sub-committees for specific
purposes (security officer, release engineering, port
managers, webmaster, etc ...), and making any other
administrative or policy decisions as needed. The Core
Team has been elected by FreeBSD developers every two years
since 2000.

More information about the election (together with a list
of the new members of the Core Team) can be found in the
official announcement.

2 April: The second release candidate build for the FreeBSD-8.3
release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64,
i386, and pc98 architectures are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites.

December 2011

9 December: The third (and probably last) RC build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release
cycle is now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64,
i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we
would like to be tested is the new installer, so we
encourage our users to do fresh installation on test
systems. Alternatively, users upgrading existing systems may
now do so using the freebsd-update(8) utility.

November 2011

17 November: The second RC build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now
available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386,
ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we
would like to be tested is the new installer, so we
encourage our users to do fresh installation on test
systems. Alternatively, users upgrading existing systems may
now do so using the freebsd-update(8) utility.

8 November: The July-September, 2011 Status Report is now
available with 28 entries.

October 2011

23 October: The first RC build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now
available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386,
ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we
would like to be tested is the new installer, so we
encourage our users to do fresh installation on test
systems. Alternatively, users upgrading existing systems may
now do so using the freebsd-update(8) utility.

September 2011

28 September: The third BETA build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now
available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386,
ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we
would like to be tested is the new installer, so we
encourage our users to do fresh installation on test
systems.

7 September: The second BETA build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now
available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386,
powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we
would like to be tested is the new installer, so we
encourage our users to do fresh installation on test
systems.

August 2011

9 August: The FreeBSD Foundation has published their first Semi-Annual
2011 newsletter which summarizes what they
have done to help the FreeBSD Project and community.

1 August: The first test build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now
available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386,
ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available
on most of our FreeBSD
mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we
would like to be tested is the new installer, so we
encourage our users to do fresh installation on test
systems.

April 2011

March 2011

27 March: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce its participation
In Google's 2011 Summer of Code program, which funds summer
students to participate in open source projects.
This will be the FreeBSD Project's seventh year in the program,
having mentored over 100 successful students through summer-long
coding projects between 2005 and 2010.

Past successful projects have included improvements to Linux
ABI emulation, NFSv4 ACLs, TCP regression testing, FUSE file
system support, and countless other projects.
Many students go on to become FreeBSD developers, as well as
participating in FreeBSD developer events around the world
through continuing support from the FreeBSD Foundation.

Prospective participants are invited to apply; more information
is available, including proposal and deadline information, on the
FreeBSD Summer
Projects page.

3 February: The third (and probably last) Release Candidate builds
for the FreeBSD-7.4/8.2 release cycles are now available. For
8.2-RC3 the amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, powerpc, and sparc64
architectures are available. For 7.4-RC3 the amd64, i386,
pc98, and sparc64 architectures are available. ISO images
for these architectures can be downloaded from most of the
FreeBSD
mirror sites. Please see the official announcement
for further details about these releases.

January 2011

25 January: The October-December, 2010 Status Report is now
available with 37 entries.

23 January: The second Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD-7.4
release cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1
architectures can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD
mirror sites. Please see the official announcement
for further details about this release.

16 January: The second Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD-8.2
release cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1
architectures can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD
mirror sites. Please see the official announcement
for further details about this release.

December 2010

27 December: The first Release Candidate builds for the FreeBSD-7.4/8.2
release cycles are now available. ISO images for Tier-1
architectures can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD
mirror sites. Please see the official announcement
for further details about these releases.

16 December: The FreeBSD Foundation has published their End-of-Year newsletter
which summarizes what they have done in 2010 to help the
FreeBSD Project and community.

11 December: The first of the test builds for the FreeBSD-7.4/8.2
release cycles is now available. ISO images for Tier-1
architectures are now available
on most of the FreeBSD
mirror sites.

20 July: PC-BSD 8.1 has been released. PC-BSD is a
successful desktop operating system based on FreeBSD that
focuses on providing an easy to use desktop system for
casual computer users. A list of new features/updates
since the last version can be found here.

14 July: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce the completion of
the 2010 Core Team election. The FreeBSD Core Team acts as the
project's "board of directors" and is responsible for
approving new src committers, resolving disputes between
developers, appointing sub-committees for specific purposes
(security officer, release engineering, port managers,
webmaster, etc ...), and making any other administrative
or policy decisions as needed. The Core Team has been
elected by FreeBSD developers every 2 years since 2000.

More information about the election (together with a list
of the new members of the Core Team) can be found in the
official announcement.

2 July: The second (and most likely final) Release Candidate build
for the FreeBSD-8.1 release cycle is now available. CD ISO images
for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures
can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD
mirror sites. Please see the official announcement
for further details about this release.

June 2010

18 June: The first Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD-8.1
release cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1
architectures can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD
mirror sites. Please see the official announcement
for further details about this release.

May 2010

29 May: The first of the test builds for the FreeBSD-8.1
release cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1
architectures are now available
on most of the FreeBSD
mirror sites.

24 May: The FreeBSD Project again received many high quality
applications from students participating
in Google's Summer of
Code program. This year 18 student proposals to work
with the FreeBSD Project were accepted as part of this
program. For those with projects that were not accepted
this year, we'd like to note that the FreeBSD Project is
always willing to help mentor students so they can learn
more about operating system development through our normal
community mailing lists and development forums.

Please read the official announcement
for more information. The complete list of student projects
selected for funding can be found in the FreeBSD Summer
of Code wiki. Coding started on May 24, so please join
us in welcoming the 18 new students to our community.

February 2010

22 February: PC-BSD 8.0 has been released. PC-BSD is a
successful desktop operating system based on FreeBSD that
focuses on providing an easy to use desktop system for
casual computer users. A list of new features/updates
since the last version can be found here.

2 February:GÃ¡bor KÃ¶vesdÃ¡n
participated in
Google Summer of Code
2008/2009 and for his work he has been given commit access to the
source code. His first pieces of work will be bringing in the result
of his summer work into the tree.

January 2010

30 January: The first BETA build for the FreeBSD-7.3
release cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1
architectures are now available
on most of the FreeBSD
mirror sites.